Journey to the Edge of Reason: the Life of Kurt Gödel

This is the first major biography of the logician and mathematician whose Incompleteness Theorem has had such far-reaching effects whereby certain propositions, although true, are not provable within the axioms of that same system, as earlier thinkers had maintained. The book draws on voluminous unpublished letters and writings, including a shorthand diary, to create a sensitive and penetrating portrait of intellectual brilliance allied to personal insecurity and psychological instability that ultimately led to Gödel's death. He was close to Einstein while they both worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. The early part of the book paints a vivid portrait of the leading characters in the influential Vienna Circle at the time of the rise of the Nazis, and it seems that Gödel was known to his family as Herr Warum -- Mr Why - for his endless curiosity. His highest aim is 'pleasure of cognition', and I felt the author had through his own lack of knowledge in the field missed the real significance and influence of Goethe in this respect as there is also an aesthetic component to cognition. What really interested Gödel was conceptual foundations. Wittgenstein and Popper also make appearances.

There is an interesting discussion of his relationship with Bertrand Russell, who regarded Gödel as an unadulterated Platonist while his own approach was much more Aristotelian. Some laconic extracts from his notebooks convey a clear impression of his metaphysical views about the rationality of the world and the potential further development of human reason. However, he also maintains that there are other worlds and rational beings, 'who are of the other and higher kind.' He thinks that the development of human thought since the Renaissance has been thoroughly one-sided, and states that materialism is false, adding that religions are for the most part bad, but not religion itself. His argument for an afterlife (p. 278) is a rational one, which he takes to entail that our earthly existence is a means to an end for another existence, and he finds it exciting that there might exist truths forever beyond human reach. An engaging read, both on a personal and professional level.